Yearly Archives: 2006

pay per content

A recent interesting thread on indiegamer forums talks about the possibility to charge customers for extra content for niche games. An example that everyone can see is Oblivion data packs, like the (in)famous horse pack 😉

Lot of people complained about it, not willing to pay even only $5 for such a “little” update. On the other hands Bethesda replied that it was a huge success. Surely we’re talking about commercial games, I know no example of such business startegy in the casual/niche shareware market.

I thought about it just recently, when I decided to add a modular expansion to my game Magic Stones, the “Quest Mode”. Basically each quest added several new neutral enemy avatar and 2 new playable avatar from 2 new magic schools of Life and Spirit. The quest mode is very different from the rest of the game and I think is the most fun part of it.

So, when I added that, I had to decide if to ask a small amount for each pack, or just release them as a “free add-on” to encourage the potential buyer to make the big step and buy the game.

While I don’t actually have any statistical data to support my idea, I can say that giving away free content (and quality content, not just “extra levels” but valuable new game features) had a very pleasant impact both on customers comment and also on reviewers. Was not uncommon to read phrases like “considering that the game gets frequent updates, is really a bargain at this price”.

In any case, I don’t plan to do that very often for future games, because is very time-consuming (every update requires at least 1-2 weeks of work).

the owlcat!

owlcat

this is my favourite pet, she’s always here by my side when working or going walking around. I call her jokingly “owlcat” because of her big eyes and the funny face she has sometime… like in this photo!

getting in the "mood"

I experience a very fun thing in my job, being an indie devs and working from home independently. Don’t know if is common or not, maybe is just me, but I’m curious to see if someone else feels the same way.

What happens when I woke up, have breakfast and then sit on front of pc ready to work? usually that is the hardest part. That’s where all sort of temptations come out. Browse forums, blogs, game sites, talk with people, with pets even. Everything except starting.

But- what is more fun- ONCE I get started, once I get past those initial 15-20 minutes, I can work without problems for long time, even 4-5h if needed only with short 10-minutes breaks! this is really fun, because I know it: I know that once I start, I can go fast, still every time I try to delay the begining of work! 😀

That’s why is important in my opinion to either get your own office away from home (ideal solution) or try to isolate yourself the best you can, to avoid unwanted interruptions (music, tv, phone ringing, etc). And those days that really seems you can’t start working, well better take it completely off and relax doing something else. Sometime will work much better than “forcing” yourself to work!

are you scared?

Are you scared of playing Scary Forest? My friend at Sakura Games have just released another small but fun game, an arkanoid-style game. No need to tell you the rules I guess…! it plays and feels really like those old retrogames, very small (even as download size) but can guarantee lot of hours of fun.

I particularly enjoyed the 2 players game, survival mode… well survival is available only in the fullversion, but hey, is just a $9.95 game…!

first USM2 speed test

I did a speed test with the actual alpha build of USM2 today. It was quite impressive, with my PC configuration of Sempron 3100+, 1,5Gb RAM (video card is ininfluent for this):

  • a database of 250k players, fixtures for 7 leagues (no cups or international competitions yet) gets generated in less than 10 secs (the start new match option)
  • the search player function, with the 250k player db above, takes about 1s to filter the results
  • sorting the search results (which can even be the whole database of 250k players), clicking on the top of the columns takes only 3-4 s!
  • when you click on proceed and go to next match (everything is automatically played now) takes only 1s for the 7 leagues above (average 18 teams each league)

Now need to add the player transfer market… 🙂